Tag Archives: consent

Are consent and trauma useful enough concepts to help navigate violation and healing? I talk with psychoanalyst and author AVGI SAKETOPOULOU on AEWCH 259!

9 Apr

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Friends,

The world is a generator of mass future trauma. Of course, it always is, but it has rarely been as obvious in my lifetime, and probably yours, as it is now. We anticipate a future of people dealing with the violence done to them, or having done violence to others, or having witnessed violence.

So it is more important than ever to ask: is our view of trauma and healing up to the task of helping so many cope with the fallout of the trauma being created today?

What if we require a whole new understanding of trauma? Not as something healable, even, but as something to work with, think with, move with?

Furthermore, because one of the ways trauma can be generated is through violation, and the framing of that violation is often a frame of a breach of consent. But… is our model of consent useful is relating to trauma and violation, or even in protecting us from it?

I’ve talked about these topics on the show before, but the conversation runs particularly deep on this episode with my guest, psychoanalystAVGI SAKETOPOULOU. Avgi is author of Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia and co-author (with Ann Pellegrini) of Gender without Identity, two excellent books that confront therapeutic/psychoanalytic status quo views of desire, queerness, and trans life in both clinical setting and the public conversation at large. Her thinking offers a strong defense of queer and trans self-determination, as well as powerfully nuanced perspectives on sexualities.

I’m so happy to share this episode, and all its challenging directions, with you.

MORE ON AVGI

Here’s Avgi’s website, which has a comprehensive list of her publications and links to other interviews, including her talk with one of my very favorite writers, Adam Phillips. I also recommend her challenging books, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia and, with co-author Ann Pellegrini, Gender without Identity.

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You can’t consent to consent. A challenging discussion on the new Against Everyone With Conner Habib, featuring author Katherine Angel!

3 Mar


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AEWCH101TITLECARDFriends,

I’ve been writing and giving talks about sex for over a decade now, and I often find it difficult to have truly stimulating conversation about it. I knew that having author and public intellectual Katherine Angel on the show would change that. Katherine is the author of the stunning work of vignettes on sex and fear and domination, Unmastered : A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell, and Daddy Issues, which questions patriarchy by looking squarely at women’s relationships with their fathers. Her book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, will be out next year, and I’ll definitely have her on then too.

Katherine and I go at sex and especially consent at so many different angles, uncovering all the problems in the way we discuss it. As it turns out, there are quite a few problems there, and I am so happy to have had this challenging conversation, and to share it with you.

(PS: sorry about the popping in the sound. Your contribution is going to pay for a few pop filters!)

ON THIS EPISODE
  • How not knowing what we want needs to be a part of sexuality
  • Why psychoanalysis is important for our conversation about consent
  • Why every sexual encounter between two people is actually a threesome with whoever created the framework of consent
  • Why consent is not a good foundation for sexual ethics
  • How nonconsensual labor frameworks (ie needing to have a job) generate harassment and make sex the culprit
  • How we always place the burden of clear expression on women
  • How overemphasizing consent denies us our full humanity
  • Why Katie Roiphie and Laura Kipnis don’t get it
  • Why listening to people is so important whether or not they were utterly violated, and even whether or not we believe or accept that they were.
  • Words and pornography
  • The false assumption that men are having “real” orgasms in porn, whereas the women are having “fake” ones
  • How arousal is protective and the body doesn’t express the truth anymore than the mind.
  • Why we need Freud now more than ever
  • The erotic fantasy of banning pornography
  • Why desires have their own boundaries
SHOW NOTES
• More on Katherine: Katherine teaches at University of London, and her book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again will be out next year. Here’s an excerpt from it, “Sex And Self Knowledge: Beyond Consent”. And here’s Katherine speaking about #MeToo at the Freud Museum.

• Katherine mentions Joseph Fischel’s book, Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice , which I am eager to read (and I’m also excited to have Joseph on the show!). Another good book on consent is Consent: Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism by Pamela Haag.

MGG• Here’s a quick review of the sexual harassment case in Ireland involving a gay man and a woman.

• And here’s the Melissa Gira Grant essay on #MeToo – “The Unsexy Truth About Harassment.“
• I’ve written about all the themes presented here before in the essay, “A Culture That’s Sick About Sex Will Never Be Able To Stop Harassment And Abuse“.

• A little write up of my talk about consent at Tufts University, moderated by Kareem Khubchandani.

• Sara Schulman‘s book, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair has come up on the show multiple times!

• The Leo Bersani quote is “There is a big secret about sex: most people don’t like it.”

• Katherine gives a shout out to Laurie Brotto and her book, Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire.

• AEWCH 34 about how arousal and desire are not the same thing, and how sex confronts materialism.

• The first time I talked about Wittgenstein’s theories and porn was way back on AEWCH 10 with Dr. Chris Donaghue.

• For more on how children experience violation when they’re sexually assaulted, read Susan Clancy’s profound book, The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children and Its Aftermath.

• Go forth and read Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips. I’ve mentioned it many times as a great book. Ancd also? What Is Sex? by Alenka Zupančič.

• I can’t vouch for Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography by Susanna Paasonen yet, but I’m definitely going to read it if Katherine thinks it’s worthwhile. And here’s a link to Amia Srinivasan‘s article, “Does Anyone Have The Right To Sex?”

That’s it for now, friends.
Until next time, may you follow your desires!
CH

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CONSENT IS NOT ENOUGH: I talk with feminist icon, Laurie Penny on AEWCH 64!

27 Mar

Friends,
We need to do better in our conversations about consent. And I don’t just mean because we don’t know how to respect consent, I mean because our conversation about it is hopelessly simplistic, ahistorical, and underdeveloped. I’ll be exploring this topic in more depth on the show.
And, well, who better to speak with first than feminist author and icon (yes, the word is apt), Laurie Penny! Laurie is the author of multiple books and countless (okay, maybe not countless, but a lot) of essays. Many of those essays can be found in Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults , and many of her ideas are presented at length in Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies, and Revolution. She’s also just finished writing a book on consent and season one of the Joss Whedon HBO series, The Nevers. For more Laurie, support her Patreon and get tons of cool stuff.
Laurie and I discuss:
  • the basics of consent and why it’s dual work
  • what sex work can tell us about consent
  • how desire plays itself out in politics
  • the James Deen sexual assaults
  • how women have to deal with the fall out of sexual assaults
  • what happens when your friend (or partner!) is a sexual assaulter
  • why almost every instance of abuse is also a gaslighting
  • whether or not Freud ignored abuse or went a long way to support survivors
  • why we need to support survivors speaking up and also be thoughtful about their sexual politics at the same time
  • the difference between consent as “rules” and an ethics of consent
  • Emma Goldman
  • How millennials are naming the problem.
  • The supernatural premise and politics of Laurie’s show with Joss Whedon, The Nevers.
Here are the SHOW NOTES for the episode.
Sorry for the disparity in volume between Laurie and I; she’s just a little quieter than me, and the equipment I have does best when both people speak at the same volume level. That said, I want to get new mics, and your contribution will go directly to that.
LIKE THIS EPISODE OF AEWCH? Check out AEWCH 50 with MONA ELTAHAWY and AEWCH 24 with ERIN GLORIA RYAN.

CHLP

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How To Destroy The Patriarchy: Muslim feminist author and radical, Mona Eltahawy, on AEWCH 50, the best episode of AEWCH ever!

4 Dec

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Friends,

On my favorite episode of AEWCH so far, I speak with feminist author and radical, Mona Eltahawy. Mona is the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why The Middle East Needs A Sexual Revolution, a book which has shaken the Arab world, feminist discourse, and also, on a personal note, has changed my inner life. Mona articulates what patriarchy is — and why it is our urgent task to resist it — better than anyone I’ve ever read or spoken to. Even if you have some resistance to the term (*ahem* hello, bros), Mona will help you see why this framing is so important. .

Mona and I talk about:

  • our sexual assaults and how we recovered and transmuted them into action
  • what patriarchy is, exactly, and how it enables and protects power
  • why enthusiastic consent is a problem (and how our consent is violated every day)
  • the urgent and political task of pleasure
  • why masculinity is a desire and the Brett Kavanaugh meltdown, where white male rage comes from
  • the way white people (particularly white women) pathologize Muslims (particularly Muslim women) without confronting their own issues
  • what we can learn about consent from porn performers
  • why sex isn’t and is special and why a sexual revolution is so important
  • the “trifecta of patriarchy and misogyny”
  • why we need to reject monogamy as a default relationship structure
  • why we don’t have to say “everything is political” to fight bullshit
  • how patriarchy hurts men too

I am so excited and proud to share this episode with you.

Click here for SHOW NOTES, which are free and available to everyone.

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Consent and Porn

14 Apr

In the past few months, I’ve been contacted multiple times to discuss consent in porn, particularly in relation to the rape disclosures related to straight performer (and former chairperson of the organization I work for), James Deen.

I’m tired of it. The gesture is almost always framed as “what can porn performers and studios do better?”

The real question is, “What can non-performers learn about better consent practices from porn performers?”

Unfortunately, very few people are interested in that. Instead, performers are subjected to rescue pleas, when, largely, no rescue is needed.

To broaden and correct public discussion, I took part in a panel called “Consent in Porn: Debunking Myths & Managing Realities.” Also on the panel, adult film stars Mercedes Carrera, Nina Elle, and Mickey Mod, as well as talent agent Mark Schechter and Director Dee Severe. The panel was moderated by Dr. Chauntelle Tibbals.

In the talk, I try to move the discussion away from consent as a concern when it comes to bodies interacting with bodies and instead to deeper and more urgent questions of permission, like: Do we actually consent to having our images used by studios forever? Should we consent to lower wages? Why are we trying to get people to pay for our porn when performers don’t get royalties?

That’s when things get a weeeee bit contentious between myself and the production people.

Watch the entire video is below.

(Note: for some reason I can’t get the video to start at the beginning, so just click on the beginning.)

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